Night’s Sorceries

His creed, both cosmic and precise, had a flexible simplicity which, usually, was soon harnessed and complicated by his devotees, or those who had picked up some smattering.

“May the gods take note,” said he, “that it is my kind heart brought me to this predicament.” The gods, of course, did no such thing.

The demons had invented love. There needs to be said no more.

“In the land of my childhood there was a saying, as follows: ‘The black rose does not anywhere grow. Therefore let us fondly believe in the blooming of the black rose.’”…

“Where I shall feast presently,”said Azhrarn, “black roses are woven in the garlands. Enlighten them therefore in your childhood’s land: The black rose blooms. No longer believe in the black rose.”…

“Zhoreb—what shall we do?”

“There is nothing to be done. Demons exist.” And then Zhoreb smiled and added under his breath, “Therefore we need not believe in them.”

He walked up to the high roof where the beacon was lit at night to jog the gods’ amnesia.

And in the manner of this ideal we strive, though even that not too onerously. For piety itself may be used to make a chain about the soul.

I will suppose that all humankind have souls, a condition which, when sober, I do not hold.

“We are taught that the gods do not care for us,” said Pereban the priest. “Therefore we must seek for guidance in our own selves.”

On the threshold of the inner court, where the marriage was to be, priests made offerings at the household altars, to the gods, who, as always, paid no attention.

The gods’ inventions are notorious by their errors.

But in the mental overcast of that town, such things went rigidly unremarked, save through their irrelevance. For life was only a series of pitfalls, not to be enjoyed or celebrated. The gods chastised pleasure just as they ignored suffering.

He took her virginity with the gentle care of love, and with love’s glorious violence.

If she had supposed the gods ever listened, she would have prayed.

“Your beauty leaves me breathless,” said Pereban.

“Yet you find the breath to say so.”

Of the rest, nothing further is said, save that lovers love and live and, in due season, as all men must, they also die. And so with Ezail and Chavir who had been Sovaz and Oloru, Azhriaz and Chuz. For such was and is mortal life, mortal death. But for love, who can predict or measure, plot, ascribe, or declare an end. Love is one of the immortals.

Finding in himself a profound strain of yearning, Pereban had mistaken it for religion. He entered the temple and dedicated himself to the worship of the goddess. Thereafter her statue—a roughhewn lump of rock with painted blobs for eyes and black wool for hair—so disappointed him that he kneeled to it, and beat himself regularly, every morning.

The sky powdered her cheeks with rouge, and the forest was mantled in crimson. Then the face of the sky altered, became that of a beautiful black damsel having no wish for rouge, but only for a net of stars and a piece of silver moon to hang on her forehead. And the forest mantled in sable, whispered with waters and the lyres of the grasshopper, and with the turning pages of leaves, and the unheard footsteps of unseen things.

To be static was never wise. Cobwebs clung to walls which stood. Men must journey, for in motion lay the seed, or at least the symbol of progress.